n doing the honours of my new apartment.

The morning being pretty well advanced, we got to breakfast; and the ice
now broke, my heart, no longer engrossed by love, began to take ease,
and to please itself with such trifles Mr. H....'s liberal liking led
him to make his court to the usual vanity of our sex. Silks, laces:
ear rings, pearl necklace, gold watch, in sort, all the trinkets and
articles of dress were lavishly heaped upon me; the sence of which, if
it did not create returns of love, forced a kind of grateful fondness,
something like love: a distinction which it would be spoiling the
pleasure of nine tenths of the keepers in the town to make, and is, I
suppose, the very good reason why so few of them ever do make it.

I was now established the kept mistress in form, well lodged, with a
very sufficient allowance, and lighted up with all the lustre of dress.

Mr. H.... continued kind and tender to me; yet, with all this, I was
far from happy: for, besides my regrets for my dear youth, which,
though often suspended or diverted, still returned upon me in certain
melancholic moments with redoubled violence, I wanted more society,
more dissipation.

As to Mr. H.... he was so much my superior in every sense, that I felt
it too much to the disadvantage of the gratitude I owed him. Thus he
gained my esteem, though he could not raise my taste; I was qualified
for no sort of conversation with him, except one sort, and that is a
satisfaction which leaves tiresome intervals, if not filled up by love,
or other amusements.

Mr. H...., so experienced, so learned in the ways of women, numbers
of whom had passed through his hands, doubtless, soon perceived this
uneasiness, and, without approving, or liking me the better for it, had
the complaisance to indulge me.

He made suppers at my lodging, where he brought several companions of
his pleasures, with their mistresses; and by this means I got into a
circle of acquaintance, that soon stripped me of all the remains of
bashfulness and modesty which might be yet left of my country education,
and were, to a just taste, perhaps, the greatest of my charms.

We visited one another in form, and mimicked, as near as we could, all
the miseries, the follies, and impertinencies of the women in quality,
in the round of which they trifle away their time, without it ever
entering their little heads, that on earth there cannot subsist any
thing more silly, more flat, more insipid and wor